ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly, depleted by pending resignations and absenteeism, appeared disinterested on Monday in the absence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as protesters besieging parliament continued to roar outside even after a climbdown to see him out of office for at least a month.

Many ministerial benches were empty and so were those of senior lawmakers of opposition and government-allied parties, with no one coming forward to inform the house about the progress of a protracted dialogue with the protesting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek.

Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq would not say a word in the house about the fate of an unspecified number of resignations from a total of 34 PTI lawmakers sent to him on Friday, after the house adjourned for a two-day weekend, in pursuance of a party decision to resign from the house that it had sought to be dissolved for fresh elections under reformed electoral laws,

Some opposition back-benchers referred to the resignations in a continuing debate on the situation arising from 11 days of sit-ins in Islamabad – the longest in Pakistan’s history -- and one of them, Ejaz Jakhrani of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), sought a meeting with the speaker later in the evening to discuss what he called suggestions formulated by opposition parties.

Another PPP member, Ayaz Soomro, suggested that the speaker call each resigning member to ensure that none of them acted under coercion.

Strangely, none of the ministers present in the house came out to deny an apparently devastating overnight interview of a retired additional secretary of the Election Commission of Pakistan, Mohammad Afzal Khan, endorsing mostly PTI allegations that last year’s general elections were massively rigged.

The prime minister, who had been coming to the house on four out of previous five days of the debate without ever speaking on the situation, did not turn up on Monday.

It seemed not many people knew when he would address the house, and certainly not the government’s Press Information Department, whose External Publicity Wing has been bringing foreign media reporters to the house for three days in the hope there will be an important speech by the prime minister, which did not happen until the house was adjourned till 11am on Tuesday for the debate to continue.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2014